The walls of the two towers pick up their plaster and dust sucking upwards into blue. Those who jumped don’t but blow softly up through open windows to sit at their desks intact. Two hundred firemen moonwalk back to their trucks, hang hoses up like warriors’ swords as the running pedestrians stop, turn on their heels and stroll back through park and plaza shops. The melted church rights its ribs, pulls the roof back on like a hat, while fallen spires resurrect from blueprints. Both aircraft tanks siphon back flames of gas and glass mosaic uncoils from debris, folding into steel archways. Two planes resume their flight to Los Angeles and Los Angeles. White exhaust feathers through morning, early and clear. Three thousand busy people loved by others are still right here. Gorgeous, the Indian-summer sky.
Deborah DeNicola’s 7th book is The Impossible from Kelsay Press. 2021.Original Human was published by Word Tech Communications in 2010. She edited Orpheus & Company; Contemporary Poems on Greek Mythology 1999, from The University Press of New England. Previous books include Where Divinity Begins 1994 from Alice James Books, Inside Light, 2007, and two prize-winning chapbooks, Harmony of the Next 2005, the Riverstone Chapbook Award, Psyche Revisited, Embers chapbook Prize and Rainmakers. Her memoir, The Future that Brought Her Here was published by Ibis Press 2009. Among other awards, Deborah received a National Endowment Fellowship in poetry.
